Marxism plus chaos plus complexity

[Simon]

Oreos are cool

[Online-University]

This is a book well worth reading, revealing that while certain working hypotheses about human society are useful, be prepared to get outside the box now and then. Things always aren't what they seem

[Sam]

ruffles are better

[Robert]

My problem with Diamond's hypothesis is that he overlooks the idea that what happened was a small but technologically advanced force with strategy overcame a larger force with seemingly no command and control or tactics. To me the strategy is key. How would things have been if there had been some daring leaders with tactics among the Indian nobility? One wonders what the native soldiers thought men on horseback were but horses were vulnerable to spears.
I'm not fond of calling one camel Bactrian(sp?) and another Arabian. How about Bactrian/Dromedary or Asian/Arabian? I'm just not sold on the book.

[Robb]

I don't see how strategy would be a key issue, as the ability to strategize is in many ways an outcome of superior technology and societal complexity.

Military strategy will be superior if a society is specialized and has a military class (just as a society will have more discoveries if scientists are freed from daily tasks of sustenance).

A military will have better strategy if it anticipates the attack.

A military will have better strategy if it is familiar with the kind of combat it is engaged in.

In all these cases, the Spanish were clearly going to have an advantage over the natives. And all these advantages stem from having the technology in the first place.

It's one thing to say "why didn't they just spear the horses?" from the comfort of the modern world.
It's another to on-the-fly prepare a strategy against a monster attack that is happening right now.

[Daniel]

"Marxism plus chaos plus complexity"? What are you talking about?

None of the 3 were themes in this book. Guns, Germs, and Steel brilliantly re-framed the discussion of social and economic development. I am less persuaded by his book book, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. But to this non-expert, Guns,Germs and Steel was eye opening.

[Robb]

I thought Collapse had a solid premise. What I found unpersuading was his optimistic spin toward the end. He seems to put on some rose-colored glasses and figure that somehow yuppies buying "green" products would fix everything in the long run. My view is that the commercial "green" thing creates more barriers to real change and causes companies to double-down on "greenwashing" techniques... which his own argument seems to suggest until he decides to get optimistic.

I guess in general, the "solutions" are always the part I find least realistic in non-fiction.
It's like writers add them in just because they have to, never actually believing they can happen.

Part of what makes GG&S work better is that it's historical and doesn't call for solutions.

[Ian]

I can't remember if it is mentioned in the books, but the Aztecs did actually have a crack at spearing the Spanish horses. Their problem was that they did not really have anything to spear them with, as they lacked steel. I gather they improvised weapons made from captured swords tied to poles. But they still lost, partly because they did not have enough metal weapons and no armour, partly because the Spanish were so outside their normal frame of reference that they could not adapt to them quickly enough.

[Ian]

The mention of Marxism in the thread title is interesting. The book struck me as having some parallels with Marxism, notably a materialist interpretation of history. But he does not really say anything about class struggle as a driver of human development.

In fact, where GGS is weakest is maybe when it does start talking about how different human societies are organised, as the analysis there seems to me to be a bit over-schematic. I suppose if you see everything as deriving from material factors then cultural differences seem like so much irrelevant flim-flam. But it is still an amazing book.

[Артём]

Cultural differences aren't irrelevant, but secondary. According to the argument, because some societies, due to environmental factors, could produce more food they had more spare time to do culture. But once they had more culture they could produce even more food and it's all downhill from there.